Date: August 06, 1997 01:16 PM
Author: Jim Smith (jdsmith1@hotmail.com)
Subject: Peanuts, Peanut Butter, PB Powder, PB&J

This is kind of a continuation of a thread that started under "Barter".

One person that appears to know says that shelled, raw peanuts store well for a long time. I was wondering about peanut butter and its shelf life. I noticed that Walton Feed sells peanut butter POWDER and wondered what you add to it...water???? How about jam/jelly shelf life?

Seems to me that my kids could easily live on peanut butter sandwiches for at least a couple years...and I have to do something with all that wheat!

(http://garynorth.entrewave.com/forums/Index.cfm?CFApp=16&Message_ID=1092)

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Date: August 07, 1997 11:09 AM
Author: Al Durtschi (rcox@mail.lcc.whecn.edu)
Subject: My 2 cents on peanuts.


>One person that appears to know says that shelled, raw
>peanuts store well for a long time. I was wondering about
>peanut butter and its shelf life.

Peanuts contain by weight 47% oil. For those of you who have never made peanut butter before, there is no added oil in peanut butter, it all came from the peanuts! The breakdown of that oil follows:

29% Linoleic Acid (18:2W6 poly-unsaturated)
47% Oleic Acid (18:1W9 mono-unsaturated)
18% Stearic Acid (18:0 saturated)

Linoleic acid is one of the essential fatty acids me must get into our diets to be healthy. Being polyunsaturated, it will go rancid quicker than the monosaturated oleic acid, which is fairly stable, and the stearic acid which is very stable. The more unsaturated a fat is, the more quickly it will react with oxygen and oxidize.

Peanut butter stores nicely because it is sealed in a container and the oxygen can't get in to oxidize it. Peanuts, on the other hand, exposed to the air, would go rancid much quicker than peanut butter that was properly packaged. You could extend this life markedly by nitrogen packing them. How long will raw peanuts last? I'm out for the count on that one and would like to ask a peanut farmer if there was one around to ask. One thing is for sure, if you can keep them cool, they will last for a lot longer.

>I noticed that Walton Feed sells peanut butter POWDER and
>wondered what you add to it...water???? How about jam/jelly
>shelf life?

Our peanut butter powder is peanut butter that has almost all of the oil removed. You reconstitute it by putting oil and water back in.

Jams and jellies already have some of the nutrition cooked out of them. You can consider these items 'wet packed,' and should be used up within two years if you are concerned about getting the original nutrition that was in the jam when it was first canned.

For a more indepth discussion about fatty acids and the differences, see our EFA page at http://waltonfeed.com/omega/

Any peanut farmers out there who could add to this???

Al

See http://waltonfeed.com/grain/faqs/vi-c.html
for a listing of food storage companies.

(http://garynorth.entrewave.com/forums/Index.cfm?CFApp=16&Message_ID=1135)

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Date: August 09, 1997 12:05 PM
Author: Chuck Huckaby (chuckaby@ianet.net)
Subject: Peanuts


Being neither a peanut farmer nor the son of a peanut farmer, I did have a question about them.

I have heard that aflatoxins can emerge rather quickly in stored peanuts.

One solution I've heard about that would work for peanut butter would be to mix approximately 500mg of Vitamin C powder in a container of peanut butter to counteract that.

(http://garynorth.entrewave.com/forums/Index.cfm?CFApp=16&Message_ID=1245)